Homesteading 2024

(How did they cope 180 years ago?)

Homesteading 2024

When I left New York for Kansas I promised myself I would never live in a town.

Face it,  New York is one hell of a town and how can I live anywhere better than that?

So since 1989 I have chosen to live miles from any community. And it is fantastic. At present I live 7 miles from the nearest gas station and 13 miles from the nearest town. And I really like it that way. But sometimes being so isolated when the heat is 110 or the raging thunderstorms come up from Texas and Oklahoma or the blizzards come in and bury me in snow, I think--what the hell have I gotten myself into?

I also wonder how 180 years ago, when people settled these plains and valleys and these trails and these grasslands and these hills, how the hell they coped with life without all the things we take for granted.

Like running water.

Like air conditioning.

Like heat.

Like the internet.

THAT was true homesteading.

I like to think living in the country and raising stock and gardens and living off the land, that I am in some way a homesteader. Boy am I friggin’ wrong.

Because in the last 2 months I have lived in the modern world without water, without electricity, without internet and without air conditioning. And let me tell you it just sucks. This about killed us. Within the span of those two months we lost the hot water heater. The water main water line. And the electricity went out daily.  And frankly we have been living like true homesteaders did.

We pulled water from the well to water the garden and the livestock. We used well water to put in toilets so they could flush. It was a mess. For showers, laundry, etc.,  we’d turn on the busted water main for a few hours and blow 3000 gallons of water for what should’ve taken 400.  So for just these two short months I could really come to appreciate the people that lived without all the amenities we all take for granted.

Especially the damn air conditioning. When the central air went down it was 100° here. You cannot work in that. You can work inside but you can't work inside because the house gets hotter than it is out there.

Fuck you Little House on the Prairie.

Fuck you little Home on the Range.

Fuck  you Willa Cather.

Don't romanticize this shit cause it is brutal.

The good news is I now have a new main water line. And I will soon have a new HVAC system. And life is starting to return to normal. But as much as it was enlightening to experience what true settlers went through in this country, I never want to go anywhere near this crap again.

See you next week with another installment of The Poultry Papers!